UK Business Professionals Choose LinkedIn for Social Networking

LinkedIn is the most trusted source of profession-related content among social platforms

Once limited to face-to-face interactions, professional networking now has a place in the social networking world as well. For example, business-focused social platform LinkedIn is close to becoming a majority activity among UK business professionals. A March 2014 study conducted by EY and Populus found that 49% of business professionals in the country had a LinkedIn account.

However, respondents didn’t appear to be actively using the site to network—at least with many people. Around half of those who did use the social platform only had between one and 50 connections, and less than 10% had between 51 and 100.

Even so, a January 2014 study from LinkedIn conducted in partnership with Millward Brown Digital found that LinkedIn was the most trusted social channel among UK business professionals, with 72% of respondents considering it a “trustworthy source of professional content”—compared with 37% for Facebook and 30% for Twitter—and thus the top social site for profession-related content.

As a result of this trust, 69% of respondents took some sort of action after receiving professional content on LinkedIn, compared with around half for Facebook and Twitter.

LinkedIn/Millward Brown Digital also found that LinkedIn was more popular than Facebook and Twitter for profession-related activities, with each activity cited by at least 68% of UK business professionals who used LinkedIn, while Facebook and Twitter saw no more than 49% and 46%, respectively.